Now THIS Is The 'Right Way' To Start A Company

But, if there WERE a picture-perfect, fool-proof method, it might look like Percolate.

Percolate, a SaaS solution for marketing managers, was founded by James Gross and Noah Brier in early 2011. Today it raised a $9 million Series A round and it has more than 30 Fortune 500 companies as clients. They're each paying Percolate about $10,000 per month.

There are a few things Gross and Brier did in their startup's earliest days that set them up for success.

They each worked for marketing companies before founding Percolate.

When they had enough knowledge and industry connections, they quit.

They bootstrapped until they proved their model.

The used outside capital to step on the gas.

Gross was a former sales executive for Federated Media and Brier worked for a marketing agency, The Barbarian Group. While they were there, they created a lot of contacts in the marketing and advertising departments of major corporations. They were also able to see inefficiencies and demands in the industry. Later, while the two were bootstrapping Percolate, everything they absorbed at Federated Media and TBG became very valuable.

Being employed also enabled the pair to save up money and bootstrap. They funded their startup themselves for one year, during which Brier and Gross worked out initial kinks.

When they finally had a working model and paying clients, they sought outside capital. They used a $1.5 million seed round to accelerate growth; they didn't waste it stumbling around and pivoting.

Of course, a lot of successful companies have been founded other ways. Zuckerberg never had a job before founding Facebook. Ben Silbermann initially set out to be a doctor, but he ended up founding Pinterest.

It's too early to guarantee Percolate's success. But whatever Gross and Brier have done up until now, it seems to be working.

Besides the fact that there was essentially no new/good/interesting information in this piece (it was a puff piece about their financing), this is Techcrunch style writing. If I wanted startup porn I would be reading their site.

Please use some discretion. Oh, and the title is just straight up bullshit.